Legco patriots’ budget criticism a warning that must be heard

It looks like things are changing at Tamar. The heat has definitely been turned up in the Legislative Council. Harsh words flew during last week’s two-day budget debate for the second reading of the Appropriation Bill 2025.

The budget unveiled by Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po in late February was the hardest one to stomach. It was also one of the most challenging, given the need to take away budget “sweeteners” and cut costs, and was never likely to go down well. So the fact the budget attracted significant criticism wasn’t unexpected.

What was perhaps unexpected was how little the government has applied austerity measures to itself. Executive Council convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee has already called out Chan on the numbers game he tried to play in the budget when it came to cutting the civil service headcount by 10,000 across two years.

Research by the Legislative Council secretariat suggests that at least 10,000 civil service posts have been vacant for six consecutive years, so we need only do the maths to see how meaningful the proposed cutbacks are in reality.

Junius Ho Kwan-yiu has already said he will not vote in favour of the budget. Openly defying the government and vowing to vote against it might seem unbecoming by members the new and improved Legco, but other lawmakers felt emboldened to criticise the government during the debate.

The issues animating lawmakers the most appear to be government officials’ failure to reduce their own pay while cutting the budgets of programmes that help the people, leaving Hong Kong’s underprivileged, elderly and middle class to bear the brunt of these hard times.

  

​Read More